Once Upon a Class
A rags-to-riches "tell"
The Sugar-Coated Opening
Every culture tells fairy tales. They feel like innocent bedtime stories, tiny moral lessons, or animated films. But sugar always has a purpose: it masks the bitterness underneath.
“Once upon a time, a poor child was rescued by a prince.”
A tale as old as time.
The poorest of the poor, chosen for their goodness, plucked from obscurity, polished, and placed in the castle. We are told this is justice. We are told this is hope. We are told this is how the world works when it works properly.
But scratch the surface and the pattern is clear. These tales are not simply entertainment. They are instruction.
The Patterns Entailed
The Poor Child
Always singular. Always exceptional. Cinderella in ashes. Aladdin in rags. Belle in a village too small to understand her. They are the “worthy” poor, sympathetic because of beauty, kindness, or hidden talent. Their neighbors are background characters. Their communities are silent. Poverty is individualized.
The Wealthy Rescuer
A prince, a benefactor, a palace. Power flows from above. Change is not collective, it is bestowed. The lesson is unmistakable: don’t organize, don’t resist, don’t imagine strength in numbers. Wait. Wait to be noticed. Wait to be chosen.
The Makeover
Before entering the halls of power, the poor must be transformed. A gown, a genie’s wish, a glass slipper. The message is blunt: you are not enough as you are. Poverty is not systemic; it is an aesthetic flaw.
The Test of VIRTUE
The chosen poor must prove humility, patience, obedience, kindness. They must endure humiliation with grace. Rage disqualifies. Resistance marks you as villain. Fairy tales are obedience manuals dressed as romance.
The Resolution
One rises. The castle softens. Inequality disappears through absorption; a single exception lifted into privilege. The millions still outside the gates vanish as the story fades.
“And they lived happily ever after.”
Disney’s Mass Production
Disney did not invent the stories. They industrialized them.
Virtue with a price tag: The good poor are crowned with dolls, tiaras, and ball gowns.
Rags-to-riches myth: Inequality is not injustice; it is destiny awaiting magic.
Consumption as climax: The ending is always material: a palace, a feast, a wardrobe. To have is to be.
Harmony through assimilation: The story ends not with systemic change but with one Cinderella in the castle.
Disney turned fairy tales into a global brand. And in doing so, they sold capitalism with a catchy song.
What the Story Hides
The Collective
Communities survive together as neighbors, unions, mutual aid. In the tale, survival is solitary until power intervenes.
The Savior Myth
It primes us to wait for leaders. Not to build power, but to be chosen by it.
The Obedience Clause
The “good” poor are humble and grateful. The angry poor, the loud poor, the resistant poor, they are cast as villains and punished.
The Scarcity Spell
Only one rises. Only one slipper fits. The rest remain in rags. Hope is privatized, not shared.
The Propaganda Function
The wealthy are comforted. They see themselves as rescuers. Their castles are not symbols of hoarding but of generosity. They are not the problem. They are the solution.
Once Upon a Class in Real Life
The fairy tale doesn’t stay on the page. It seeps into politics.
Every bootstrap story, every “self-made” billionaire profile, every campaign ad about the kid who rose from nothing, all trace the same arc. Poverty as personal trial. Wealth as moral reward. Structural inequality erased by the miracle of individual virtue.
This is why collective solutions are resisted. Universal healthcare, living wages, housing as a right; they don’t fit the story. They’re messy, communal, built by many hands. They require neighbors organizing, voices raised together, confrontation with power instead of assimilation into it. No fairy godmother can wave a wand for that. No prince can script it into a ballad. So the system says: get that out of here.
Give us the good stuff instead. The fantasy. I want to feel pretty, to be noticed, to be wanted, to be loved, to be cared for. I want the palace to pick me. I want to be selfish, goddamn it, haven’t I suffered enough? The fairy tale whispers: if I endure with grace, if I wait my turn, if I play humble, my suffering will be rewarded. The castle doors will open, the spotlight will find me, the story will change just for me.
That’s the hook… Fairy tales teach us to root for the exception. Capitalism teaches us to accept that only the exception survives. The rest of us? We clap from the crowd, dreaming of our own invitation, while the gates lock tighter behind the chosen one.
And We Live
The fairy tale ends at the palace gates. The rags are gone, the crown is won, the kingdom sleeps easy. But out here, outside the gates, the story keeps going. Out here the kitchens are still hot, the fields still worked, the wages still stolen.
Poverty is not cured by a prince. The crown does not reach into the village and fill empty cupboards. It does not stitch wounds or pay rent. It does not change the hours of labor that grind a body down. A kiss, a coronation, a new title. None of it cancels the debt of survival.
Hunger is not solved by a ball gown. A new dress does not put food on the table or medicine in the cabinet. Beauty does not boil water. Sequins do not stop eviction notices. The makeover only makes misery palatable to those watching, not to those living it.
The castle never saves the servant. It saves itself. Every banquet it throws is built on the backs of those who serve it. Every wall it raises is to keep others out, not to bring anyone in. The storybooks sell us a lie: that compassion flows from above, that mercy is a gift of the powerful. But castles are not built for mercy. They are built for walls, for gates, for survival of the few at the cost of the many.
And here is the truth they don’t print in the storybooks: living in a castle fucking sucks. Yes, sometimes the tales let royalty “rub elbows with the locals,” like Jasmine wandering the marketplace or the prince disguised as a beggar, but they always go back. Because being poor fucking sucks, too.
These tales are written for the rich to feel important. To prove their castles are worth dreaming of. To reassure themselves that we want what they have.
But for those of us on the outside, it curdles. It makes you hate your own life, wish for something more, measure yourself against illusions. It grows envy, jealousy, bitterness. The fairy tale doesn’t just promise salvation. It poisons contentment. It tells you that what you have, your neighbors, your community, your survival, isn’t enough. Only the castle counts.
We celebrate other people’s failures because that’s the script we’ve been given. One day, we think, it’ll be us turning the tables. One day we’ll get to sneer, “You wouldn’t wait on me… you work on commission, right? BIG mistake. BIG. HUGE!” and strut out the door, shopping bags in hand, feeling pretty.
That’s the fantasy: humiliation reversed, worth proven, all through the act of buying. It’s not liberation, it’s consumption dressed as victory. The fairy tale repackaged for the mall. What matters isn’t justice. What matters is being seen, being envied, proving we belong inside the castle by walking out with its gold.
The kingdom doesn’t fall because one servant rises. It survives that. It expects it. It builds entire stories to celebrate the chosen exception. One Cinderella at a time, one Aladdin, one Belle. The castle can absorb that. It can crown the exception and keep the rest scrubbing floors.
The kingdom falls when the servants stop bowing. When they put down the trays, when they leave the kitchens cold, when the fields go untilled, when the gates are unmanned, when the backs that carried it refuse to bend.
Once Upon a Class is not a bedtime story. It is a warning. And warnings are heavy because they name what we don’t want to face: that the spell of obedience is fragile, that belief is the mortar between every stone.
And when belief cracks, the walls crack. The fairy tale ends not in a wedding, not in harmony, not in “happily ever after.” It ends in silence first… the sudden stillness when the castle’s gears no longer turn… and then in fire. Fire the stars will see where the castle once stood.
ETHER
You hear it in the hinges,
metal groaning under weight not its own.You hear it in the hush
after the last tray is set down,
after the last broom is leaned against the wall.It is the sound of absence becoming presence,
the rhythm of silence teaching itself a new song.Not command. Not plea.
Something stranger,
like roots splitting stone,
like smoke tracing constellations.The melody was always there.
Beneath the banquets. Beneath the hymns.
A hum, a pulse, a thread that never snapped.And when the score is heard in full,
it will not be mistaken for music.
It will be mistaken for fate.